“A lighted lamp and closed doors, and the outside world is what you will it to be,” the Măluka theorised, and to disprove it Mac drew attention to the distant booming of the bells that swung from the neck of his grazing bullocks.
“The city clocks,” we said. “We hear them distinctly at night.”
But the night was full of sounds all around the homestead, and Mac, determined to mock, joined in with the “Song of the Frogs.”
“Quart pot! Qua-rt-pot!” he croaked, as they sang outside in rumbling monotone.
“The roll of the tramcars,” the Măluka interpreted gravely, as the long flowing gutturals blended into each other; and Mac’s mood suddenly changing he entered into our sport, and soon put us to shame in make-believing; spoke of “pining for a breath of fresh air”; “hoped” to get away from the grime and dust of the city as soon as the session was over; wondered how he would shape “at camping out,” with an irrepressible chuckle. “Often thought I’d like to try it,” he said, and invited us to help him make up a camping party. “Be a change for us city chaps,” he suggested; and then exploding at what he called his “tomfoolery,” set the dining-net all a-quivering and shaking.
“Gone clean dilly, I believe,” he declared, after thinking that he had “better be making a move for the last train.”
Then, mounting his waiting horse, he splashed through the creek again, and disappeared into the moonlit grove of pandanus palms beyond it.
The waggons spelled for two days at the Warlochs, and we saw much of the “Macs.” Then they decided to “push on”; for not only were others farther “in” waiting for the waggons, but daily the dry stages were getting longer and drier; and the shorter his dry stages are, the better a bullock-puncher likes them.
With well-nursed bullocks, and a full complement of them—the “Macs” had twenty-two per waggon for their dry stages—a “thirty-five-mile dry” can be “rushed,” the waggoners getting under way by three o’clock one afternoon, travelling all night with a spell or two for the bullocks by the way, and “punching” them into water within twenty-four hours.